Podcasts

Telling Stories In Sisterly Harmonies

Kourtney and Kyrsten Roseman complete each other’s sentences like only sisters can.

They also harmonize and walk through life like only sisters can.

The musical duo known as The Rosies released their debut record this year.

And much of it tracks in rich, simultaneous chords their word-to-word, note-to-note journey through their family’s tribulations.

“Those songs about what we’ve experienced as the five of us and as the two of us and as individual people have shaped that album,” says Kyrsten.

“We’ve carried each other’s burdens in our family and it’s made us who we are,” adds Kourtney.

The Rosies come from a devout Christian and musical family.

Their parents, Glen and Joyce Roseman, sang in a traveling gospel show.

But Christian doesn’t always mean nice and a lot of church folk couldn’t handle their father’s bipolar disorder.

“People fear what they don’t know,” says Kourtney.

“And what they don’t understand,” adds Kyrsten. “It would almost be like a wall would go up. And we would experience that a lot where people would be at arm’s length, like, ‘I don’t want to get any closer to you.’”

“People have actually said those words,” Kourtney says. “And we’ve taken it in.”

And they’ve put it out – in songs like “Let the Walls Fall.”

Their album, Efflorescence, throws country, Americana and pop shades of darkness and light over their father’s hard road – and their own.

Sisters aren’t always nice, either.

And they’ve written about their struggles as a musical pair that began when Kyrsten had multiple back surgeries and Kourtney moved to Orlando to take care of her.

“If I had not gone to Orlando, I don’t think we would have gotten together,” Kourtney says. “Something inside me clicked and it was like, ‘This is what I want to do.’”

“In that time period of writing, it was really tense with us and we had to work through a lot of things,” Kyrsten says. “Angel’s Speeches was one of those gems that came out of that. When we listen to it, it reminds us of how far we’ve come.”

They say it was healing to write these songs.

Well, I would extend that to the listening, as well.

Family harmonies must be written into our DNA as something uplifting and powerful.

It’s strange to hear them talk about periods when they weren’t on stage together.

“When I started, I was okay with being behind the scenes, being a songwriter and never really hitting the stages,” Kyrsten says. “And when we got together, it was like this explosion of a different desire happened.”

“That’s because I did different things!” Kourtney interrupts. “I’m a performance-driven individual. I’ve always been.”

The younger Roseman sang with their parents in churches.

An obvious question is why the pair didn’t follow their mom and dad into the Christian music world, an obviously smaller but more dedicated flock of CD buyers.

Instead they have big dreams of Nashville, record contracts and touring the country.

“I want to write music that’s going to reach every walk of life and not just somebody who may be a Christian,” Kyrsten says. “I want to talk about life in its entirety.”

And honestly, I could hear their songs – especially stripped down efforts like Missing and The River – on a variety of playlists.

That kind of Sam Smith sensitivity carries a lot of weight over long distances.

And distance is, unfortunately, something we’re going to have to experience with The Rosies.

Their big ambitions mean that they might leave Savannah in a year’s time.

Until then, you can enjoy their hip-to-hip sisterliness wherever harmony is on the schedule.